League for Innovation in the Community College January 2019 | Page 32

From Speed Bump
- Ramp:
to
On
Holistic Assessment and the Reinvention of Placement
T
BY ROSS MARKLE
he last decade has seen a remarkable and much- College Research Center (2012) showed the capacity for
needed wave of innovations in developmental multiple measures to improve placement accuracy, and by
education, and the mechanisms for placement are no 2016, more than half the states had some form of multiple
exception. As recently as 2011, a survey of community colleges
measures policy in place (RFA Multiple Measures, n.d.).
(Fields & Parsad, 2012) found that nearly all used a placement
test, with the vast majority relying solely on that measure to The use of multiple measures, as well as other innovations
make placement decisions. in the developmental education space, are a welcome
change to a system that simply was not an effective means
But with growing concern about the validity of placement of remediating students (Burdman, 2012). Yet there is still
test results (Burdman, 2012), many institutions looked for important work to be done, especially around the issue
alternative placement models. Work from the Community of placement. This process is, in many ways, the first
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League for Innovation in the Community College Innovatus